Honest, he did! He was very explicit about my coming here and spreading the insanity, not that I don't have plenty to spread.
I could duplicate my intro at HMEM or create a new one of equally epic proportions. Let's try the latter.
Let's see ... 63; 100% disabled vet living on a VA pension; father of the sweetest, most precious, most wonderful, most beautiful, most loved [and so on - trust me, I can go on for hours!] daughter in the universe; retired nondenominational minister; ex- too many things to count (some of which NO one will ever get me drunk enough to admit to) but at least I tried them all; all around generally insane person with the paperwork to prove it.
Working on really small things is fun. I mean, yeah, being able to see what I'm doing would be nice but where's the challenge in that? Anyway, my shop (when I wrestle it back from Murphy) has in it three watchmaker's lathes (one each 6, 8 and 10mm), a Unimat SL-1000 and a Taig with the extra kit to make it into a horizontal mill. There's also a watchmaker's drill press and hand tools that are size appropriate to all this. And there's a micro-welder that's pretty cool ... except when it's not supposed to be, of course.
On the electronics side, I can go from vacuum tubes down to SMDs with equal clumsiness which I think is pretty nifty. Well, not the clumsy part but the rest is. (In one of my future planned projects I hope to combine the two by finding a really truly dead 211 [VT-4C] or something of similar size and very carefully removing the envelope so I can install a SMD low power transmitter inside.)
What got me overhauling my shop was Noelle. She has MS and a host of other autoimmune disorders, and needs something to distract her from the ever increasing pain & weakness. She loves Daddy-made things and, true to daughters worldwide, has me well and truly twisted around her little finger. I love making things for her which is part of my retaliatory merciless spoilage. Anyway, the idea is to make Noelle-machines that accomplish no useful task except to help redirect her thoughts and, hopefully, let her smile even if for only a little while. For reasons I don't want to get into here, we can't be together (She's in Iowa, 3500 miles away) so this is one way she can have Daddy close even though we're physically apart.
Oh, and I have a particular fondness for Steampunk, though my take is slightly different ... not that it makes much difference since there are very few hard & fast rules as to precisely what Steampunk is anyway. (I took my "world" a bit further than usual by going ever so slightly into the geopolitics et al and one of these days I'll post it on my blog. Or one of them.
So there it is. The short version of me. More or less. Subject to change without prior notification.
Best regards,
Kludge